[HN Gopher] Innernet: A private network system that uses WireGua...
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       Innernet: A private network system that uses WireGuard under the
       hood
        
       Author : cmfcruz
       Score  : 123 points
       Date   : 2022-09-21 09:31 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | axy wrote:
       | Noticed listening port 32875. I still wonder why even WG
       | developer chose 51820. Well, I understand on their small
       | containers shit never happens, but I thought they are aware of
       | ip_local_port_range
        
       | maybelsyrup wrote:
       | Anyone else getting Tim and Eric vibes from the name here?
       | 
       | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5BZkaWZAAA
        
         | bschwindHN wrote:
         | Heh, I named it and was specifically going for that reference
         | :)
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | nyanpasu64 wrote:
       | Does this traverse NATs and outgoing-only firewalls?
        
       | teleforce wrote:
       | It will be very useful and interesting to integrate Innernet with
       | WiPhone to create a modern version of secure Sneakernet on the go
       | e.g. bike intercom system, emergency networks, etc [1].
       | 
       | [1]WiPhone: An Open Source Phone That's Really Yours:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32762767
       | 
       | [2]Sneakernet:
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
        
       | gz5 wrote:
       | Nice project.
       | 
       | If I understand correctly, it makes an underlying WG network be
       | closer to default-closed than default-open?
       | 
       | If so, do you plan mTLS and identity-based least-privileged
       | access (e.g. like other FOSS such as OpenZiti and Nebula seem to
       | do) for future?
       | 
       | If not, what is a good use case for innernet compared to those
       | types of solutions?
        
       | waynesonfire wrote:
       | > innernet is similar in its goals to Slack's nebula or
       | Tailscale,
       | 
       | That's great but doesn't tell me what innernet is or what
       | problems it's going to solve for me. Terrible docs, no idea what
       | this is suppose to do and I won't waste my energy trying to
       | figure it out if the author can't write few sentences to describe
       | the project.
       | 
       | Though, glad the author called out the registered trademarks!!
       | That's really important.
        
         | vineyardmike wrote:
         | If you knew what Tailscale or nebula was you'd know exactly
         | what this did. If you were someone who had a problem that could
         | be solved by this product, you'd already be familiar with those
         | brands.
         | 
         | Besides, did you read the first two sentences?
         | 
         | > A private network system that uses WireGuard under the hood.
         | See the announcement blog post for a longer-winded explanation.
         | 
         | Did you read the sentence after the one with brands?
         | 
         | > It aims to take advantage of existing networking concepts
         | like CIDRs and the security properties of WireGuard to turn
         | your computer's basic IP networking into more powerful ACL
         | primitives.
         | 
         | Innernet creates a private overlay network using WireGuard.
         | Unlike the brands it mentions which do the same thing, it uses
         | CIDRs and WireGuard to implement ACL and permissions.
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | The README is pretty clear about what the product is and what
         | it does. The very first line also links to a blog post with
         | more details. What exactly are you expecting?
        
       | generalizations wrote:
       | Very cool project. One thing that seems lacking, however, is the
       | ability to join a single machine into multiple subnets - what if,
       | based on the example given halfway down the page here [0], I
       | wanted to have access to resources in both the `engineering` and
       | `straylight` subnets? It's not clear to me that innernet lets my
       | computer be part of both, since 'you are your IP address'.
       | 
       | [0] https://blog.tonari.no/introducing-innernet
        
         | ok_dad wrote:
         | You can only make "associations" between the subnets, I think,
         | see: https://github.com/tonarino/innernet#adding-associations-
         | bet...
        
         | McNutty wrote:
         | As mentioned in the comparison sections, other products use
         | security tags to achieve this. So I'm assuming that it isn't
         | supported except by relying on external firewalls.
         | 
         | Also interesting to note no mention of zerotier anywhere in the
         | doc or comparisons
        
           | generalizations wrote:
           | Yea, I inferred that was the purpose of the tags, though I
           | didn't see the capability mentioned explicitly anywhere.
           | 
           | It doesn't seem like a fundamental limitation; if innernet
           | let a single machine have multiple wireguard interfaces, each
           | on different subnets, that would seem to be an elegant
           | solution. But I didn't see mention of that, either.
        
             | McNutty wrote:
             | IIRC, what you suggested is exactly how zerotier implements
             | it
        
       | ghostpepper wrote:
       | > innernet is not an official WireGuard project, and WireGuard is
       | a registered trademark of Jason A. Donenfeld.
       | 
       | Is it typical for open source projects to register trademarks? If
       | not, anyone know why Mr. Donenfeld decided to do so?
        
         | bityard wrote:
         | I don't know about typical, but it does happen when the owners
         | of a project want the (legal) ability to prevent others from
         | misusing the name to cause confusion. Firefox and Linux are
         | both registered, for example.
        
         | chipsa wrote:
         | It is typical, if only to keep the trademark from being used by
         | a completely unrelated bit of software. See
         | https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/policy/ or
         | https://trademarks.justia.com/771/04/sqlite-77104711.html
         | 
         | It just gives teeth when someone uses them wrongly.
        
           | paulgb wrote:
           | Hence Debian shipping the "Iceweasel" browser instead of
           | "Firefox". (I may have the history wrong here? In any case,
           | someone forked Firefox and called it Iceweasel for trademark
           | reasons.)
        
         | CharlesW wrote:
         | > _Is it typical for open source projects to register
         | trademarks?_
         | 
         | Yes!
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mark_Institute
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trademarked_open-sourc...
        
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       (page generated 2022-09-21 23:01 UTC)